Tuesday, February 18, 2014

My friend Roamer stayed with me this past weekend. Roamer was my co-writer on the Sustaining Universal Needs (SUN) Prospectus. We spent the weekend talking spirit, and making plans for resilient infrastructure, i.e. taking this house off the grid. He translated my ideas into a 3D diagram of what this house would look like. We talked about closing the loop as much as we can, on a 3/16 acre lot like this, energy wise. Growing as much food as we can, generating as much energy as we can on-site without fossil fuels, photovoltaic or wind. We are writing a business plan, to present to Kickstarter, with the intention to document every step of the way.

It was also the Doomstead Diner (where I am Admin) 2nd Anniversary party, Saturday night. So Roamer and I sat in my sunroom and chatted with RE, head Admin and founder of the Diner, and really, the first to articulate what would become the SUN. In the second video, you meet Surly1 and Haniel, also Admins @ the Diner. The video is somewhat crude, the tech is a bit sketchy (when is the tech not a little sketchy?), but it is human, just a few guys sittin' around (a few thousand miles from each other), and havin' a conversation about the issues of the day, gettin' drunk.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

I've never had good seed starting conditions in this house. My starts are always small, leggy, compared to what is available. This year, I'm going to build a greenhouse outside these three windows. I'll access it by crawling through the window next to the bookshelf. I will have a door outside too, but I would rather not open it until planting time. I will circulate air through at night, and hopefully it will add heat to the house during sunny days. Add moisture to the interior of the house; it has been so cold, and the air so dry, my throat and sinuses are raw.

These are some very happy plants.

This is a clementine. I bought it at the uber retail outlet where I worked, last June. It is three times the size it was when I bought it. All that new growth is from the last month. I'm going to buy a bunch of citrus trees this spring, sprout some avocados. Put them in big pots, keep them out on the sidewalk and driveway in the summer, haul them inside in the fall.

This is a Jasmine I bought at the grocery store. All those green shoots are growth from the last two weeks. Needs a bigger pot, like the clementine; and a bigger trellis.

Jasmine flowers, slowly opening.

This is my rosemary. See those two tall shoots out front? All new growth this winter.

Oh, and these.

I'll be building some sizable gardens at a few of the houses where I work. I have a plan to experiment with seed saving, while planting a mixture of heirloom and hybrid. Hopefully too, planting a bevy of fruit trees. I'm ordering about 12 more fruit and nut trees and shrubs, for this house. By this fall I might have 70+ fruit and nut trees, shrubs and vines, on this 3/16th acre lot.

The spring greenhouse will be temporary. I hope to expand it in the fall, and make it more permanent, extending it most of the full length of the south of the house, incorporating passive solar heating of water, and aquaculture. I want to try to grow pepper vines. I'm going to try to get off natural gas as much as possible in the next year. I would like to expand the house and garage, make them super efficient, self sustaining to an extent - but I'm going to need a little help with that.